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RELIGION

Pope warns punishment is not a way to peace

  • 27 October 2014

Two Roman observers of public life – the tabloid Tacitus and the broad-sheet Augustine (pictured) – remarked on the contrast between the high intentions that lead people to act punitively and the destructive consequences of their actions.

Augustine remarked that all wars are waged out of a desire for peace. Tacitus said sardonically that where they make a desert they call it peace. 

The truth of these perceptions can be tested against today’s war making. But it is also evident in other areas of life, particularly in the penal system. In an address to the International Association of Criminal Law last Thursday Pope Francis focused on the dynamic of punishment in contemporary society:

Over the last decades the conviction has spread that the most disparate social problems can be resolved by public punishment, as if the same medicine can be prescribed for the most diverse illnesses. This is not about trusting that public punishment will play the part traditionally attributed to it, but rather the belief that benefits, which really demand the implementation of another type of social or economic policy and of social inclusion, can be obtained through such punishment.

In Australia this conviction is enshrined in the idea of a war on crime fought with the weapons of criminalisation and imprisonment. We can see it in the imposition of heavier sentences, the removal of judicial discretion and flexibility in deciding appropriate sentences’, the bias against awarding bail and parole. They are also seen in the criminalisation of a broad range of behaviour in terrorist legislation. The assumption is that the possibility of arrest and the imposition of heavy sentences will deter people from offending and will make the community safer. They will encourage people to take responsibility for their actions, and civil peace will prevail.

Common sense suggests that these means of producing peace and security will be more likely to make a desert than peace. When people, sentenced to ten years in jail for a crime with many extenuating circumstances, see that they have received the same sentence as others who acted with full consideration, they are likely to leave prison embittered against society.  And they will have lost the relationships and connections that would prevent them from re-offending. With the huge expansion of jails necessary to hold those sentenced there, too, less funds will be available for programs that address the reasons why people come into
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